A couple days ago I returned home from seeing the new Godzilla movie to discover that What We Found in the Sofa had been nominated for a 2015 Sakura medal. I couldn’t help feeling it was more than a coincidence. I’m pretty sure I've read somewhere that Linus Pauling had just gotten back from seeing Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal on the day he learned he was in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize. The situations seem identical. Although, possibly, they only seem that way to me.

The Sakura medal. One of 36 Views of a Children's Book Award.

The Sakura medal is voted on by the students in Japan’s international schools, and in the middle-grade category there is usually a field of twenty or so books, making the Las Vegas odds on Sofa winning to be about 100 to 1. Still, I feel it’s a great honor just to be nominated, whether Godzilla had anything to do with it or not.

Godzilla.Flossing.Song playing on the soundtrack:Duke Ellington's "Take the 'A' Train."